Peter traces the roots of Riemann's concept of potential, from the clues contained in his lectures and posthumously published “philosophical fragments”, as well as Leibniz's gravitational vortex theory and Gauss' treatment of the inverse square law. The physical hypotheses of Gauss, Weber, and Ampere for electrodynamics are reflected in Riemann's theory of retarded propagation of electromagnetic phenomena, which was a direct refutation of the action-at-a-distance mysticism of the Newton cult.
